August 31, 2012

“Movie & An Argument” Podcast: Clint Eastwood, the GOP, and Shia LaBeouf Nakedness

On this week’s episode of A Movie & An Argument, With Alyssa and Swin, we discuss (scroll down for the audio):

  • Totally Biased, FX’s racially charged news/comedy series hosted by comedian W. Kamau Bell (click here to check out an interview with Bell). Alyssa had visited the set in New York over the weekend, and shared her thoughts on the show’s potential.
  • Clint Eastwood, his politics, his movies, and his (then) upcoming address to the 2012 Republican National Convention (click here for the transcript and video of Eastwood’s bizarre “Invisible Obama” speech, which apparently upset Paul Ryan).
  • Lawless, a new Western set in Virginia gangland during Prohibition, starring Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, and Guy Pearce (my review here). It’s during this part of the conversation that we spend far too much time discussing LaBeouf’s dorky nakedness.
  • The first season finale of Aaron Sorkin’s HBO drama The Newsroom (and why the series still frustrates us so).

Each week, I’ll be sitting down to chat with ThinkProgress critic Alyssa Rosenberg (who also does killer work at The Atlantic and Slate‘s “Double X“). We’ll talk, argue, and laugh about the latest movies, television shows, and pop-cultural nonsense—with some politics thrown in just for the hell of it.

Alyssa describes herself as being “equally devoted to the Star Wars expanded universe and Barbara Stanwyck, to Better Off Ted and Deadwood.” I (everyone calls me Swin) am a devoted lover of low-brow dark humor, Yuengling, and movies with high body counts. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and tune in during the weeks to come.

We’ll be featuring guests on the program, and also taking listeners’ questions, so feel free to Tweet them at me here, and we’ll see if we can get to them during a show.

Thanks for listening!

Click here for more movie and TV features from Mother Jones. To read more of Asawin’s reviews, click here.

To find more episodes of this podcast in the iTunes store, click here.

To check out Alyssa’s Bloggingheads show, click here.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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